Perception of Music Heard via Interfering Paths
Theodore John Schultz, B. G. Watters · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1964
In most instances, the transmission of music from instrument to listener involves multiple paths with relative time delays. The measured sound pressure due to sound waves arriving via these several paths will be reinforced at some frequencies and will be partially cancelled at others. We have found one particular set of circumstances where, contrary to earlier opinion, the hearing mechanism is not able by virtue of some precedence effect to disregard the cancellation of two complex, narrow-band, out-of-phase sound waves. We believe that the case reported here has elements in common with many typical music-listening situations.